Fear Overload

This is a personal and not very entertaining post. I will ask you to keep your political views to yourself, please. Feel free to comment on the subject of the post, but if you feel the need to express your frustration with Republicans or Democrats, please do it elsewhere. You’ve been warned.

Because of my background, I’ve lived through the periods of political upheaval and social collapse. I’ve seen the government and social net fall apart. It taught me a certain resilience. When you get to the point where you can’t take it anymore, you learn that, no matter what happens, life goes on. My father is the perfect example of this. I’d asked him about Putin before, and he basically said, “Eh. Sometimes you live a little worse, sometimes you live a little better, but it doesn’t really matter to people like us. We can’t do much about it. Let it go.”

I can’t be quite so hands-off in my politics, but I have to tell you, I’ve reached the point where I can’t watch or read news anymore. I’ve switched to BBC and it helped for a while, because they seemed to be a bit more measured. But I log onto social networks, and it feels like a non-stop screaming. It is always an emergency. If it’s not a hurricane coming, it’s healthcare being taken away. It’s radical fear mongering against the refugees, or women, or incumbent Republicans or whoever the latest target is, followed by people screaming in outrage.

This morning, it’s about the lack of response to Puerto Rico, and possible nuclear war with North Korea, and police beating people in Spain, complete with pictures of people bloodied or up to their chest in water crying.

An elderly couple in their late seventies is forced to become a new kind of migrant workers because they don;t have enough money to retire. They are cleaning campgrounds and hotels, and they are a part of entire generation who can’r afford to retire.

A Wells Fargo teller stole money from a homeless person. What kind of a scumbag would do that?

It feels like the planet is boiling.

It has been proven that seeing images of people in distress and watching people at extremes of emotions, such as anger, sadness, and outrage deeply affects our psychological well-being. We are pack animals at the core. We sympathize. We are so good at it, we sympathize with made-up images when they exhibit human emotions.

From the professional point of view, I understand the logic behind sensationalizing every story. We react to emotional images and topic, and the stronger is the reaction, the higher are the ratings. But at this point it’s a non-stop bombardment.

The thing is, all these things were always happening. But before the explosion of technology, there was some way to shield yourself from it. You could turn off TV and walk away. Now it’s everywhere. It’s on the phone. It’s on Twitter. It’s on Facebook. It’s in my email. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel real fear about the future. I haven’t been in this place since my early twenties, when we were drowning in debt. I’ve donated money. I’ve called my congressmen, who ignored me. I volunteered my time to good causes. None of this seems to be making a damn bit of difference. I don’t know what else to do.

I’ve been trying to limit my exposure, because my job is to provide a break from all of that. The essence of my purpose as a writer is to create a novel that can give others ability to escape. Our work is that refuge in a storm, a place where a reader can go when their loved one is in ICU, when they had an awful day at work, or when life just needs an off switch. But at this point I can’t escape. I’m having the hardest time actually writing. Being a writer means cultivating a sensitivity to other people. You become a bit like a satellite dish in a constant receiving mode. Right now it’s too much. I understand why people go on retreats and hide for months in some secluded cabins. I can’t do that, because I am a wife, and a mother, and a friend, and I suspect I would be clawing at the walls within the second week, but I understand it.

So, in an effort to try to find some balance in life, I’m installing a plugin that will auto-Tweet the posts from the blog for me. I will view the comments and responses to those posts, but not immediately and if you want to get my or Gordon’s attention, the blog is the best place. Facebook tends to be a little less fear-inducing for me, so we will still be there.

Comments

I am right there with you (and all these other thoughtful posts). Thank you for sharing your light in my darkness. I love reading your words, whether blog or book. I also heed your recommendations and enjoyed Date Night, and more recently Kingpin. I walked into my yoga class this morning and burst into tears. I fear for the future of humans, and humanity in general. I try to shine my light the best way I know how, as much as I can. It’s really all we can do.

Thank you for a thoughtful post that I believe is reflective of what a majority of Americans are feeling right now. I too have removed myself from most news sources, as I don’t believe the majority is actually news, but instead opinion pieces. Love, love, love all of your writing… just know that you are not alone in these feelings… I wish all media would open their eyes to impact of the current reporting

I agree that much of what you hear from most news sources is opinion. We have more than enough stress in our lives without the news being sensationalized like it’s in Weekly World News or National Enquirer

I certainly understand where you are coming from with your post. I too really limit my consumption of “news” and especially “opinions” on social media where many seem to get some sort of kick out of being as hateful as possible in their comments. That said, there are incredible people everywhere that strive every day to bring light and improve the world around them. Millions donate to charities, volunteer their time, talents and help to help others.

Look even to the most recent disasters – you saw people helping people no care for race, religion or the other petty differences and issues that agitators seem to work so hard to divide people about. Unfortunately disasters, horrendous events happen, have always happened, but people come together, help each other, get a bigger perspective that lets them get past any differences and spurs them to work together. Most people are good.

Yes, I too sometimes lament that courtesy and self-control seem to be considered old fashioned and undervalued by many, unfortunately often by those with the public eye where they promote such attitudes. BUT – every day I see, read, hear about people caring, sharing, helping others. Not for rewards, not because they necessarily agree or believe the same, but because they believe that to do good is the way to improve things and make the world a better place.

Don’t let the doomsdayers get you down. You two are one of the rays of sunshine that brings good and happy to so many.

I want to say that your books are often the ones I turn to when I need to escape. (The year my mom died I read every single one of your books. Twice.) With all the fear being fostered by the news outlets I read more fiction and watch / read less news. I seek out neutral news sources (have you heard about the adorable 15 year old boy with a passion for both politics and factual – non opinion based – reporting? Google Wake Up To Politics) and keep my social media to an absolute minimum.
The fear affects everyone. I’ve decided that what I can do is focus on spreading kindness and giving positive feedback. So, in that light, thank you for the gift of your writing. You make a difference in my life.

It’s been a long time since I started reading your books and blog and I don’t usually post comments, but today I think I may be able to bring you a little bit of confort as you do with your work for us.
I’m from Barcelona and I was at one of the schools where the police brutality was shocking. Still, even when the antiriot police attacked we endured the hits peacefully with our hands up. When we heard on the radio that small vulnerable towns were being raided over by the “Guardia Civil”, we resisted harder, because we were there defending our right to express ourselves democratically. And after the horror and the outrage of what happened started to fade away, we were left feeling proud and stronger than before because we did it. We voted and fought together with dignity and hope, no matter if your vote was a yes or a no. And this feeling of unity is something that we will never forget. So don’t feel sad for us. In Catalonia the 1 of October will always be remembered with pride.

I can only say thank you for sharing your talent with us–we are all the better for it. I feel your angst and wish it could be otherwise, but this is what we have today. All we can do is our best to share a smile, a helping hand, a kind word. I hope you can persevere and find the desire to write again. Again, thank you!

My grandfather (who was my heart) died the day after the election. I can’t see anything dealing with politics without thinking about him, and missing him so much. I found a Facebook plug-in called social fixer (http://socialfixer.com/) that’s been my godsend. You can block keywords, politics, football, pretty much anything. Its nice, I’ve got most of my feed down to funny memes and puppies and my friends having babies or going on trips. The happy stuff.

There are times I want to head for the top of a mountain and just observe civilization go through its cycles. Not be a part of them. This has all happened before. I avoid most blogs, facebook, and am careful about my news sources too. I read a lot of books just to escape life. It all helps. I re read Innkeeper or about Rogan and Nevada when I want a place to go that I like and where I like the people I meet. You are valued and perform a valuable service by keeping us all sane-er than we would be otherwise.

I am from India. The situation here with the media is not far from what you have described. I read the newspaper daily. And often I feel sad, slightly depressed and resigned to all the bad that is happening in the society. Its really hard to not be affected by it especially if it is a crime, I’m like ” That could be me or someone I love or care about , what can I do to prevent it or make it better for not just me but others too. But I don’t know what to do.” If I read the news in the early morning, usually it is not a good start for the day or the week that’s why I avoid reading news in the morning.
Just because of all the negativity in the media, a newspaper in India started a ‘No Negative Monday’ campaign since last year. Mostly positive news is printed and a few paragraphs containing negative news with a headline of ‘Negative news section’. A research shows readers have given a good response to the campaign.Something like this should be implemented by other sources of media too.

I withdrew from close observation of the media several years ago because of the very thing you are speaking about. I have NPR email headlines. If I think it necessary to know about that particular topic then I read it. If not it’s deleted. NPR is my BBC. I might look into BBC though. As a clinical therapist it became very necessary to turn down the dial down on the negative input. Even though I no longer work in that field, I have no desire to turn up the volume. I hope you find solice in the reduction of bombardment. It’s very good to take care of yourself!

Katarzyna, that was amazing and exactly what I needed right at that moment. Thank you.

Illona, your writing brings escape, comfort and laughter to people around the world. Unplugging from the constant negative news, social networking mess is a healthy choice many people are making. Know that you are a light shining in the darkness and you have helped me in particular to decompress after some seriously painful life experiences.

I have found a renewal of my heart in listening to/reading about people and their accomplishments. I follow ‘A Mighty Girl’ and ‘Humans of New York’ which both celebrate the gamut of human experience and resilience. They both remind me of how amazing people are, especially as we live our seemingly ordinary lives.

One of the things I love about your books is how you create supportive relationships between your characters. The loyalty of the Baylor family, the internal squabbling that quickly turns to protection when threatened by an outside force reminds me of my relationship with my siblings. Kate’s change from a bitter loner as she collects friends and family she trusts and defends remind me to value my good friends.

Compassion and kindness don’t get a lot of media attention, but it is more pervasive and powerful than hate and fear, sometimes we just forget to see it. Thanks for making it part of your stories, for showing how love, in many forms, makes individuals and families strong enough to face a myriad of challenges.

I’m younger than your father, Ilona, but I understand his point. More than 20 years ago I stopped watching TV and reading print news, because it made me so anxious – I was waking up 2 and 3 times a night with screaming nightmares – and I had a small person to take care of. I worried constantly about his future, and felt helpless to do anything about it. Several people recommended I just tune out of the news. Now the people around me know to tell me if something big has happened so I am not blind-sided. And I just do the best I can, day by day, to be a good person and to offer help when I see a need.

Also, I found this site https://www.allsides.com/ which gives several perspectives on news and political situations. I skim the headlines there a couple of times a day but don’t allow myself to read many of the articles. I hope it may be of benefit to you if you need to know what’s going on but want to avoid the drama.

But thank you, thank you, for being people that create that escape for the rest of us. I bought “Wildfire” the day it came out but I haven’t read it yet, because this has been such a shit year for me personally as well as the world at large (my dad died unexpectedly in January, right before the US effectively went up in flames) that having that escape in reserve is creating a weird safety net for me. I am waiting for a day that I feel okay to read it, so I can enjoy it, and I know that when I do it is going to make me feel like things are all right at least while I’m reading. So please know that even though we all feel helpless and frustrated, you guys really are doing something that helps.

I now track the number of books I put away in a week as a measure of how stressed I am. Two or fewer is healthy. Odds are these will not be puff books, either. If it hits 6+…. I’m having a meltdown, but don’t have the decency to tell myself. If I listen to the news in the morning, or if I get a lowlights-of-the-day from the hubby, I’m guaranteed to finish a book before I sleep that night. Despite all the chores and responsibilities and the things I have to show up for.

It’s like I no longer allow myself the privilege of thinking. I’m a journalist.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get unplugging. And I’m grateful to you that you’ve managed to produce content despite the atmosphere this year (which I think is a good deal worse than last year because perhaps there’s more despair?). And to encourage you to not stop doing what you can.

My sympathies. After years of being a news junkie, I unplugged last year. It was just too tiresome listening to people screaming at one another or screaming about someone/something else. Now I only turn it on in very measured doses. I still read a lot of it on the internet, but I’m cautious about where I go, and I always skip video. For me there is less emotional reaction if I’m reading the words rather than seeing the images on video. I’m not on Twitter. I turned off the updates on Facebook after getting tired of receiving endless emails from its algorithms trying to coax me to log on to “read this update!”. We’ll survive the current state of the world. Things are crazy now, but I’m still an optimist. Best wishes and good luck with Kate #10!

Thank you for your books that take me away from the realities that I, also, am allowing to cause me to become scared, depressed, and everything in between. Whatever you have to do to keep yourselves in a place of peace , so you can share you talent with words with the world, is fine by me. 🙂 Hugs to you and Gordon.

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

I like Fox news channel. They refrain from being Chicken Littles. They report the news and make an effort to find the silver lining in things. It’s true there is a lot of bad things in the world, but there is a lot good, too. Adversity is an opportunity to grow and rise above. My father always said we choose our mood in how we choose to think. And he is right. The movie Pollyanna has a quote that if you look for the bad in humanity you will surely find it. The reverse is true as well. I have a lot of faith in God, and that gives me confidence that I can handle whatever happens. The Catholic Church has weekend spiritual retreats, some are silent retreats. I find it refreshing and it fits in my schedule.

I totally agree Ilona – I have given up watching the news but it’s difficult to ignore my phone. I’m grateful to authors like you and Gordon who have provided me with some of my favourite escapes. Someone at work asked me just yesterday why I read Fantasy (and urban fantasy) and my response was, “it’s my escape from reality”.

It is my belief that life is the first gift God gives us and our passing is the final gift we receive on this plane. What we do with the time in between is our gift back to Him/Her.

My personal goal is to live a beautiful life. My Autistic daughter is turning 18 next month and sharing her journey has made me a better person. She inspires me and exhausts me in the same minute (I’m certain that’s a teenage thing more than an autism thing). We laugh often and binge watch comedies on Netflix in our pajamas every other Saturday. We don’t let in much that is negative, though real life sometimes tosses us flaming bags of poo. I’m sure that’s true for everyone though. In those moments, I remind myself “Not my monkeys, not my circus.” It helps to not take it personally.

To escape I read, take the occasional 3 hour art class (canvas painting, pottery painting, seasonal projects, flower arranging… whatever amuses…) It lightens the mood and is way better than the panic stricken regurgi-news that infiltrates even KLOVE.

As for feeling like the planet is boiling, this might help your perspective: I know a woman who left home at age 13. She traveled the world learning French on the streets of France, Russian in the USSR… She returned to the US and got her GED, then her PHD. They hang side by side now. She loved the people she met in her travels, they shaped her life. When asked her thoughts on world politics she replied, “It’s like they’re having an asshole contest and everybody is winning”. She said that almost 35 years ago and it still rings true today.

It is a cruel crazy beautiful world. Dodge the circus monkeys and the flaming bags of poo. Let go of any guilt for having a life you enjoy. The small things you do become the big things. And, just because you aren’t there to see the seeds you plant grow and come to fruit doesn’t mean you aren’t doing enough. Cinderella’s Fairy God-Mother said, “Even miracles take time.” and she was right. We keep planting the seeds of kindness & knowledge knowing that it is someone else’s harvest. I see it as part of our gift back to God and isn’t that a beautiful thing to do in this crazy world ?

I too have to filter how much news and media I can handle. So much of it is negative and it can really affect my health and well being. I feel a little bad that I’m not as informed as I should be, but at the same time a person can only handle so much.

In the last year I started doing random acts of kindness. It isn’t a big thing sometimes they are really small. It is something that makes be feel better about myself and I like that instead of focusing so much on me I take a moment and thing about someone else. A few things that we have done are rake the leaves in the elderly woman’s yard while she was at church, Leave a baked good in someones cubicle at work while they aren’t looking, Pay for the person behind me in a line. Compliment a complete stranger on something. Steal my niece unexpectedly for a few hours so that my sister and her husband can have ‘alone time’ together. Give a thank you card to someone with some words of appreciation. Pay for someones dinner at a restaurant (we usually pick a single parent or military). Notice what someone is lacking in their life and try to fill a need they might not even know they have. For example I have a co-worker that drank coffee every morning and used a disposable cup. I got her a cute coffee cup with a fun saying on it and just left it at her desk. Now she uses that every morning and has no idea where it came from.

I think this helps me look at the world a little bit differently. It has made my a little more aware of my surrounding and the people in them. Sure it isn’t far reaching but maybe I can help make my little corner or the world a little happier.

I don’t know if you’ve read any Barbara Tuchman (love her), but in her 1978 book “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century” she wrote of Tuchman’s Law …

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening — on a lucky day — without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman’s Law, as follows: “The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold” (or any figure the reader would care to supply).

Yes. I live overseas, and while there are many, many reasons life is good, one of them is the insulation that comes from not being able to understand the host language and not having as easy of access to news stations. I can get on, skim headlines as needed, and get off. As a result, I stay more uninformed than some would say is wise, but my spirit stays calmer and I can teach. I have to teach, and when my soul is frothing, I can’t focus. They can’t learn. We are all miserable.

I couldn’t agree with you more- that’s why I have stopped receiving a newspaper or magazine to my door. I couldn’t take the endless politics and the bad news. I also don’t follow Facebook or any news feeds. I still hear way more than I can handle from the one weather channel I check on my phone but I’m not being overloaded. The world is a scary, sad, dangerous place. I prefer to live in my bubble and try to help the people around here that I can, and send charity to the ones I can’t.

I feel exactly the same way… i dont have cable just to get away from it all…I just want to say that your books have definitely brought a break from reality in my life and…I don’t know where I would be without them…you are my favorite authors…just wanted to say thank you and keep them coming!